Digital Video - January 2008 - (Page 45) BY JAY HOLBEN DV 101 JAY HOLBEN A graphic demonstration of the disparity between natural daylight and artificial tungsten color temperature. Model: Mason Ray Hathorne. BALANCING ACT MASTERING COLOR TEMPERATURE AND LIGHT INTENSITY. S shooting on location often means struggling to find the balance between myriad color temperatures and intensities. Whether you’re shooting a narrative script, documentary interview, industrial demonstration or wedding ceremony, mixing color temperatures and lighting intensities can be the greatest challenges. Professional lighting is not cheap. Although, as was recently pointed out in the DV.com forums, buying it is one of the best investments you can make. And the longevity offered by solid equipment, amortized over time, can make it the least expensive tools in your kit. Quality lights will probably outlast cameras, computers, monitors and other expensive necessities. One of the first challenges that all DV users encounter is mixing daylight and tungsten color temperatures. Sunlight, on average, is 5600ºK, whereas tungsten lighting is 3200ºK. If you balance the camera to natural sunlight, the tungsten light will be orange. If you balance to tungsten, the daylight will be blue. In most situations, the supplemental lighting available to you is tungsten, which is more prevalent and less expensive than arti- ficial daylight sources, which require complex electronics and bulbs and are accordingly priced. In order to avoid color-temp mismatches, one color must be converted to match the other. Many people choose to correct the tungsten units to daylight with CTB (Color Temperature Blue or Correct to Blue) gels, such as those manufactured by the industry leaders GAM, Lee and Rosco. This will solve the problem by filtering out the red/orange wavelengths from the tungsten light and only allowing the blue wavelengths to pass through, thereby altering the color temperature to 5600ºK. The problem here, and the reason why I rarely (if ever) do this, is that you are cutting out a considerable amount of light from your source. Full CTB will cut the light’s output down to 1/4 the output (two stops). So, if you have a 500-watt tungsten light, putting full CTB on it effectively reduces it to a 125-watt light. If you then bounce that light or put it through diffusion, you’re reducing it even further. You can easily end up with the brightness of a 30-watt bulb from your 500watt fixture. When you’re competing with the intensity of natural daylight, which is almost always overpowering the interior illudv january 2008 www.dv.com 45 http://DV.com http://www.dv.com
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